Having to choose between viability and livability in an
ownership housing development for Morgan Hill teachers, the City
Council chose livability.
Having to choose between viability and livability in an ownership housing development for Morgan Hill teachers, the City Council chose livability.
The words, viability and livability, were Councilman Greg Seller’s.
Real approval of the partnership between the city and South County Housing will wait until a final public hearing on March 24 when the plans have undergone further adjustments.
The project originated when the school district discovered it was losing many young teachers who left to find more affordable housing elsewhere. Since Morgan Hill’s existing below-market-rate housing program (BMR) is available only on a lottery basis, affordable housing targeted to teachers was deemed a useful goal by the council.
Put simply, council chose a scenario with 10 units over one with 12, eliminating two potential teachers from the housing market but, at the same time, intending to improve the quality of the entire project. The lesser number of units will afford more open space and include a two-car parking apron in front of most garages, bowing to the tendency of Californians to use the garage for storage and park outside.
The 10-unit plan is described as modified-attached homes, for which there is no need for the expensive insurance policies now required for attached condominiums as with the 12-unit version.
Each unit will be larger, have more room for guest parking and need fewer building code variances. Each unit will, however, cost the buyer and the Redevelopment Agency slightly more.
City Manager Ed Tewes said the entire cost of the project to the RDA is $855,000, including $400,00 in land costs. The city already owns the property.
“Much of this money would be repaid (to the agency) from sales,” Tewes said. The RDA would subsidize $85,597 per unit which would sell for $421,097.
The current median price of a single-family home in Morgan Hill is $585,000.
The reduced density and code variances helped to calm neighbors of the project on Watsonville Road and Calle Sueno, just west of Monterey Road. At every public hearing concerning the project, neighbors told the council of their concerns about the density, the appearance and the negative effect they thought the development would have on their lives.
Jan Lindenthal, SCH’s director of community development, said she had met twice with the neighbors to hear their concerns.
“They wanted to be sure there was no direct access to their neighborhood, that there be no shared amenities, that there be enough guest parking and that the design matched theirs,” Lindenthal said.
She said that, when considering actual building coverage of the site, the teacher housing is less dense than the neighbors’ units: 59 percent for the neighbors; 53 percent with 12-unit teacher housing and 47 percent with 10-units.
At earlier hearings neighbors worried that if enough teachers couldn’t be found to buy the units, SCH would sell them to less desirable people. Similar fears were not mentioned Wednesday. Council had previously assured the neighbors that units not taken by teachers could be offered to local police officers or other district workers but not to the general public.
Joyce Maskell said that a 2001 survey showed plenty of 4-year or less teachers, mostly single, clamoring to buy local housing at a price they could afford on a teacher’s salary, plus some who had been with the district longer but had not managed to qualify for a loan in a city where housing prices are so high.
Lindenthal told council that she had also met with Morgan Hill teachers and remains convinced that there is a ready-made pool of buyers available. In fact, she recommended the 12-unit scenario because of the number of teachers waiting to buy a house in the community where they work.
On this Wednesday, Dan Kenney, a neighbor who is also Vice-Chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission, told the council that he likes the idea of 10 units. The area is zoned for seven; twelve was the maximum considered. But he stressed the need for watch out for safety issues. Morgan Hill teacher Ron Justed said that, while he had been lucky in getting a BMR house to buy, he was concerned about others.
“Speaking on behalf of my fellow teachers,” Justed said, “I am concerned about them finding affordable housing.”
Richard Punches said he had grown up in Morgan Hill and returned to teach but was turned down by many agencies.
“They said I didn’t qualify for the loan because I was making a teacher’s salary,” Punches said.
“I was really frustrated. But by a stroke of luck (the BMR lottery) I got the 106-year-old renovated parsonage (on West First Street). I’m a winner,” Punches said, pumping his arm in a cheer, “but I have friends who aren’t.
He said teachers who live in town can stay in town to help out with the band, to attend school functions and generally add value to their jobs.
Resident Keith Gangitano had a different opinion.
“As a teacher I would resent being told where to live,” Gangitano said. He accused Lindenthal of manipulating the facts to get council to agree to SCH’s preferred 12-unit scenario. “She is bending the numbers – it’s shady.”
Lindenthal assured council that she was not ‘bending the numbers’ or manipulating.
“I wasn’t trying to make 12 sound better,” she said. “I was trying to lessen the variances.”
Another teacher, Eugene Strangio, said he was lucky with the BMR program as well but was uneasy about the neighbors’ feeling that teacher housing might be a negative for the area.
“I’m feeling undercurrents of the neighborhood being brought down,” Strangio said. “We bought (a BMR) in the Preservation Park area in 1985 (north of El Toro Fire Station) and have seen the home values of Preservation Park rise substantially. These fears are unfounded.”
Strangio said he supports the housing project. “It’s needed – teachers will take advantage of it.” One of the first things new teachers mention to him, he said, is the price of housing.
Mayor Dennis Kennedy said, after this string of testimonies to Morgan Hill’s BMR housing program, that the credit should go to Measures E and P, the city’s residential slow-growth ordinance that requires 20 percent of RDA revenues reserved for the BMR project.
Information on the BMR project: www.morgan-hill.ca.gov or 776-7373.
